Pandemic - Reign of Cthulhu

This looks like it might be what I had hoped Eldritch Horror would be. People initially described the way EH looked as being if Arkham Horror was more like Pandemic, but it ended up being just a different version of Arkham Horror. I didn't need another Arkham Horror, but putting that setting into a Pandemic style game is more appealing for me. And from the component list, it's definitely not just a reskin.

Pandemic may be jumping the license shark before long here, though. I'll probably pass on Pandemic: Love Letter.

The Munchinking of Pandemic has begun...

Next step; Pandemic: Munchkin.

Christ.

The thing is, the public health/epidemiology setting was the coolest thing about Pandemic. It was novel, interesting and worked with the mechanics. Cthulhu isn't novel at all.

Priced right I can see this doing really well at Target. Color me interested.
And the Pandemic branding is apparently doing it's job, this hasn't faded into the "yet another Cthulhu game" shadows. My guess is that mechanically it's about as close to Pandemic as Star Wars: Risk is to Risk.

I don't like marketing for marketing's sake. This clearly has nothing to do with a virus.

Zzzzz. The Cthulhu stuff does nothing for me.

Pandemic: Cthulhu: Legacy: The Crossroads Game... then maybe you've got something there.

Yeah, fuck this. Bunch pandering bullshit, and sorry but not sorry, shame on anyone not recognizing/treating it as such.

Josh Look wrote: Yeah, fuck this. Bunch pandering bullshit, and sorry but not sorry, shame on anyone not recognizing/treating it as such.

To be fair, that's how a lot of us felt about Loopin' Chewie. You pick your poison.

Can we finally agree that Mythos theme is played out?

that depends whether you are talking about Shadows over Normandie or Pandemic, by the looks of it.

They really missed an opportunity to do something original here, like zombies.

We were just talking about the mythos at F:AT Thursday. We were talking about what the ultimate kaiju game would look like, and while King of Tokyo is good, _THE_ kaiju game remains to be seen. We talked about the scale it would tackle since most of the time it's in a city. Uba brought up that something like Cthulhu Wars might make for the ultimate kaiju game. Now I am no fan of Cthulhu Wars for a wide variety of reasons, but one of them was how thematically silly it was. While CitOW makes you feel like you're doing Chaos God stuff, Cthulhu Wars makes you stretch your imagination a bit to get the same feeling. Thinking about the game with a kaiju theme instead struck me pretty hard and I couldn't help but say, "Why did the need to pander that fucking game?" Uba, coming from the days of Arkham Horror appealing to people for being familiar with Lovecraft's stories wasn't quite aware of what it's become. It's not like zombies that has broken it's way into other more mainstream mediums, it really has become something that has its widest appeal in hobby games. Not movies, not TV, a video game here and there, but it's everywhere in board games and RPGs. I'm not sure why that is, but it kind of sucks.

I've been reading Providence by Alan Moore, and his mission is an admirable one: Remind people that this stuff is meant to be SCARY, not cute, not funny, but unsettling (and write the definitive Lovecraft story to boot). He says we're at a point in which Lovecraft's work will inevitably go entirely mainstream, all it will take is a major motion picture IMO, at which point it will lose all effect. It will hit a point where it has the same level of overexposure as Dracula and Frankenstein. Shit like this suggests we're already there.

wadenels wrote: They really missed an opportunity to do something original here, like zombies.

I see what you did there.

At least it has the basic connection to the Pandemic mechanics in that you need to keep "the forces of evil" under control in any given area (just like the disease cubes).

Ha! When I saw this thread I immediately thought about my F:AT Thursday conversation with Josh, Uba and Engineer Al. This is a perfect example of the type of bullshit we were complaining about. A game getting a theme slapped on it for no good reason other than it's popular. And we all know that boardgamers simply cannot get enough Cthulhu.

They're really going all in trying to lure in Ameritrash lovers...it's got minis and everything. For me this is going to be a gigantic pass. I would never choose to play this over Eldritch Horror.

THAT BEING SAID....this is going to sell like bottled water outside of Immortan Joe's Citadel. Despite not being interested I can understand the business decision behind it. Pandemic + Cthulhu = Scrooge McDuck's Money Bin.

Monsterpocalypse would be a good contender for "THE kaiju GAME" but I've often thought the winner would be a game that had a "Geoscape" like X-Com, so something like Monsters Menace America, but when you decimate a city, you play a game of MonPoc.

Sure, it would take a week to play, BUT WHAT A FUCKING WEEK IT WOULD BE